Jeff Sheng Bio/Contact
Jeff Sheng is a Los Angeles based photographer and artist living in Los Angeles, California. He is also a visiting professor and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for the Studio Art department and the Asian American Studies department. He teaches studio courses in Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced Photography, as well as upper division academic courses in Asian American Queer Issues and Asian American Male Identity. He received his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine, along with a graduate emphasis in Asian American Studies in 2007.
In 2006, Jeff began FearlessCampusTour.org, a speaking and exhibition series of “Fearless,” his photography project about lesbian and gay high school and college athletes, to reach out to young people to draw attention to the way homophobia adversely affects our society, particularly in sports. Instead of traditional gallery and museum spaces for his artwork, he utilized and solicited high schools and colleges to place exhibitions of his project in student centers and athletic facilities - areas where high numbers of teenagers and college students would congregate and see the photographs. His slide presentations and speaking engagements allow him to share more about the inspirational lives of the athletes in his project and to effectively integrate a strong element of activism into his artistic practice. In a span of a year and a half, Jeff had over twenty solo exhibitions and artist talks around the country, including at such places as Yale University, USC, the University of Florida, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University - Bloomington.
Jeff is a 2004 recipient of a Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Grant, and a 2005 Paul and Daisy Soros New Americans Fellowship. He has photographed for the New York Times Magazine and OUT Magazine, and has been published and reviewed in the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and he is currently part of, “LA 25,” a juried exhibition series sponsored by the law firm Skadden Arps: Los Angeles, curated by Ilene Kurtz-Kretzschmar, with jurors John Baldessari, Kris Kuramitsu, Weston Naef, Catherine Opie, Ann Philbin and Paul Schimmel.
From 2002-2003, Jeff interned for the photography collector and gallery owner Bill Hunt, now at Hasted Hunt gallery in Chelsea, New York City. In 2003, Jeff also served as an assistant and intern for the Los Angeles based commercial and celebrity photographer Greg Gorman, before going to Harvard University to be a teaching assistant for Professor Chris Killip and 2004 visiting lecturer Elinor Carucci.
Jeff received his BA in 2002, from Harvard University, magna cum laude with highest honors, with a degree in filmmaking and photography (department of Visual and Environmental Studies). His undergraduate work won him the Louis Sudler Prize from the Office for the Arts at Harvard, a distinction given to the top graduating senior with the most artistic talent and achievement.
He is currently looking for gallery representation in Los Angeles and New York City.
To see more of his work, please select one of the following links:
Revolutions of Memory (2004-present)
